People: Private Lives

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Captain Owen D. Johnson, 27, won the Distinguished Service Cross and, following in family footsteps, became a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. He got the French decoration for underground-organizing; his father, Fictioneer (Stover at Yale) Owen Johnson, was similarly honored for World War I propagandizing; Grandfather Robert Underwood Johnson, onetime Ambassador to Italy, was made a Chevalier for easing international copyright restrictions.

Nunnally Johnson, veteran magazine and cinema writer, explained the art of scenario-writing: "You write every line as though it were a ten-word telegram."*

Vaslav Nijinslcy, 55, ballet idol of a generation ago, not fully recovered from the madness that kept him in a Swiss asylum for years, was the subject of a heartless exploitation. Impresario Sol Hurok announced that he had invited Nijinsky to appear at the Metropolitan Opera House next month, won his consent, and hoped he would dance Petrouchka, a role Nijinsky created in 1911.

Lieut. Colonel James P. S. Devereux, commander of marines on Wake Island when the Japs invaded, arrived home at last after long imprisonment, played ball with Son Patrick (see cut) before receiving the Navy Cross. The citation (signed by the late Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and called by Under Secretary Artemus L. Gates "the shortest and finest one I have read"): "For distinguished and heroic conduct in the line of his profession in the defense of Wake Island, Dec. 7 to 22, 1941."